Dealing with Sodding Spam

Like that alliteration eh?
OK, so I hate, hate, hate having to type in numbers and words that are so squashed together I can barely figure out what they are, and until recently I've always though "Oh come on, how much spam can one blogger get?" To be fair to Blogger, enough of it has been caught and sent to the naughty file to await deletion with a swift click from me. But of late, every other comment is from someone a) failing to recognize that I, and most of my readers, don't actually speak Hindi, and/or b) writing such terrible prose that even if it were relevant, it's immediately deleted.
So - what to do? The blogger word verification system is really irritating to me; I don't want my readers to have to make five attempts to leave a comment, because they just won't. They'll bog off to find a blogger who doesn't make then jump through hoops just to respond.
On the other hand, I don't want to make someone "sign up" to something either. I mean, we all have enough log-ins and passwords to deal with don't we?
Any suggestions pals? Or shall I just keep checking the comments and leaping in with my administrative delete powers every now and then?